A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“I’ve been told I give really good hugs.”

So says Lindsay Mintenko, the Managing Director of USA Swimming’s National Team, in the second episode of this new series of the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

“Just being able to sit with an athlete; sometimes you don’t even have to talk,” she continues, “it’s just so they know you are there.”

It is difficult to imagine many of her predecessors demonstrating such empathy with athletes whether they’re a multi-medal winner like Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky or a swimmer who came agonisingly close in some of sport’s most competitive trials. The top-two finishers are guaranteed a spot on the roster; those in third – who would likely medal with other nations – are almost certain to miss out.

“After the trials, our main job is to make sure our athletes are focused on Paris, but we don’t always take a step back and look at those who came third by a hundredth of a second. That’s a tough place to be; so we really need to make sure that we do a better job of looking out for those athletes afterwards.”

It is perhaps no surprise that USA Swimming is currently the only national governing body in the US to have an in-house licensed clinician on staff.

This has happened on the watch of Lindsay, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in the 4x200m freestyle.

She is the first former athlete and first woman to serve as Team USA’s Managing Director, but as she tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch, it is not about her but serving her athletes and their coaches.

Lindsay also spoke about her role being analogous to that of a general manager in the major leagues [8:00] and the importance of providing a challenging but safe environment [17:40].

Elsewhere, she elaborates on the importance of providing mental health support for her athletes [29:50] and explains how her swimming career began when as a six-year-old Lindsay fell out of a tree [5:30].

Henry Breckenridge X | LinkedIn

John Portch X | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By John Portch with additional reporting from Henry Breckenridge

“One of the great things about the job is there’s no typical day,” said Michael Bourne. “There’s gate posts and structures in place to keep us on track, but my job is very much to adapt to that.”

The Performance Director of the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] was a guest on the Leaders Performance Podcast in early July, where he discussed his remit.

“I break it down as if we want to deliver performance, then performance equals the talent that you’ve got multiplied by the exposure you can give that talent to them to develop and grow, minus interference.”

When it comes to high performance, tennis has several traits that separate it from other sports and this is reflected in the LTA’s provisions. For example, the organisation offers full-time multidisciplinary support to players from under-10s through to elite level, but player needs vary from individual to individual. They provide coaching too, at camps and competitions, but players tend to have private coaches.

It is a balance and one that he has been trying to strike during his four years in the role, which began during the first year of the pandemic. “It was a huge learning curve for me,” said Bourne, whose non-tennis background has never held him back.

Here, we reflect on his thoughts about his role.

He has a firm focus on the mission

Bourne, who has worked in sports science for organisations including UK Sport, the UK Sports Institute and the England & Wales Cricket Board, has a clear understanding of what the LTA is trying to achieve and why. “Our mission is to be world-class and respected at player development,” he said. “The slightly longer answer to that is that we create a pathway for our most talented players to go on a journey to becoming elite professional players, whether that’s in the tennis game or wheelchair tennis game.” It requires continuous self-evaluation on both his part and the LTA’s as well as acknowledging how the challenges faced evolve. Bourne emphasised a people-first approach. “However you cut it up, we are a performance-based industry and you have to have great people to do great things.” He spoke of “passion and care”. “We have a team of individuals who deeply care about the journey these players are on”. Passion is one of the LTA’s values and the sight of others in service to players is one Bourne finds “very humbling”.

Michael Bourne, Performance Director at the LTA. (Photo by Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images for LTA)

His role in driving change

In addition to being mission-focused and people-centred, Bourne places a premium on critical thinking. He also believes that having great ideas is one thing, but being able to apply them is quite another. “You can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught,” he said. “Ultimately, leadership is about being able to drive and support change.” His team bring their tennnis-specific expertise and Bourne ensures everyone is aligned around the work that needs to be done. “It gets the balance between my background and their backgrounds in the right space.”

He does not assume things will happen on their own

Bourne readily admits his expertise is not rooted in tennis. Nevertheless, the necessary traits and skills are made familiar to him through his staff. He has set up a clear chain of direct reports and basic processes, but it needs constant attention. “Don’t just trust that they’re going to happen all the time – make sure that you’re around enough and verifying whether the communication, the connection that’s supposed to be in place, is actually in place; and if you need to step in and just give the person that support or just give that reminder of what we’re trying to do to prevent those dreaded silos developing people ploughing their own furrow”.

He relishes the daily challenges

Bourne feels that his role is inherently challenging; and that’s alright. “I feel like in these types of jobs, if your job is easy, something is wrong – I don’t think they’re meant to be easy,” he said. “If they’re easy, then you’re missing something or you’re not pushing when you need to push. There’s always more.” It feeds into his attitude towards the challenges faced by the LTA. “It should be unacceptable in a high performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.” There will often be “brutal facts”, as he put it, “then it’s my job to ensure that we’re all leaning into that and in the right way in a professional way and in a safe way; having the right types of conversations that we need to have.”

Listen to the full interview below:

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

Michael Bourne has a sports science background, so it is no surprise that he places a premium on critical thinking.

“It is core to me,” the Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] tells the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

Critical thinking is a skill that also served him well in roles at UK Sport and the England & Wales Cricket Board amongst others before he took the reins at the LTA in October 2020 (with Covid restrictions still in place).

“But,” he cautions, “leadership for me is about change and progress, and you can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught.”

It starts with taking stock. “As a leader, make sure that you are ensuring everybody else is confronting those brutal facts and you’ve got to be ahead of that,” he says, adding that he too must be open to feedback.

“It should be unacceptable in a high-performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.”

In the first episode of this new series, Michael explains his mission-driven and people-centred approach to helping produce British tennis players with the means to compete with the world’s best [33:10].

During the conversation, we also touch upon the challenges the LTA faces and the benchmarks set [8:30]; his belief in the unique qualities of British tennis [14:30]; why the flow of information cannot be taken for granted at the LTA [38:30]; and the enduring power of the Lion King to move him [48:00].

Henry Breckenridge X | LinkedIn

John Portch X | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By John Portch

Jen Overbeck painted a scene for Leaders Performance Institute members.

“Here’s the situation,” she said. “You have an idea born out of your expertise; a lightbulb moment. Maybe it’s something that’s developed over time and you bring it to somebody you think is going to benefit, whether that’s an athlete, someone in your organisation or somebody who works with you.

She continued: “You’re explaining it with all your passion and they say ‘yeah, nah, I’m not excited about that at all. I don’t think I want to do that.’ Has that ever happened?”

A few individuals tentatively raised their hands in the audience at Melbourne’s Glasshouse.

“OK, good, because otherwise you should be up here teaching instead of me!”

Overbeck, a Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School, was speaking at February’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

Over the course of half an hour she explored the social and psychological elements that affect how people react to requests to change and why, as a leader, that reaction can depend on your power and influence.

Power v influence

Overbeck used the example of Phil Jackson as someone sports coaches and practitioners might aspire to emulate. She lifted a passage from his 2013 book Eleven Rings where he wrote about ‘benching the ego’:

‘After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team’s vision.’

Jackson came to recognise that power and influence sit on a spectrum. As such, the NBA’s most-decorated coach, provided the perfect case study for Overbeck to define those terms.

“‘Power’ is your ability to get somebody to do something that they don’t want to do,” she said.

This is set in contrast to ‘influence’. “You could also call it ‘persuasion’,” she added. “This is all about how much credibility and persuasiveness you have to influence people to go where you want them to and they’re going there willingly.”

There are few coaches in the high performance community that would prefer to increase their power at the expense of their influence and Overbeck stressed that you are free to make your choice.

“When you understand the differences and what drives them, you can make those choices deliberately – and that’s generally better for ourselves, our athletes and our organisations.”

How to elicit change

Overbeck explained that there are three types of behavioural strategy:

1. Dominating

She says: “That’s when you’re using a great deal of power; you’re not using a great deal of influence. You’re basically trying to make the person change.”

2. Negotiating

This emerges in a space where a leader has more moderate power and influence. “We’re giving people some choice, but we’re not giving up on our power altogether.”

3. Supplicating

“This is a very big word,” said Overbeck, “because it means you’re completely leaving it in the other person’s  hands; you’re exerting no power whatsoever.”

The best scenario for a leader, as Jackson understood, is to be negotiating. Overbeck posed a series of questions that leaders can ask themselves when moving away from either dominating or supplicating:

• Do you typically believe that you have the skills and ability to bring people into alignment with yourself?
• Is it more your experience that you end up fighting them?
• Do you tend to lean more on power? Or do you lean more on your persuasion and your credibility? And what informs your response? Do you know why you’re doing that?
• Which of these three behavioural strategies is your go-to?

The tactics available to a leader

Overbeck ran through some of the tactics available to ‘negotiators’ and asked the audience to raise their hand if they’d employed any of the following:

• Sharing information about the background and context of change. Nothing unusual here and when she asked the audience at the Glasshouse most admitted they had tried this approach.
• Explaining the benefits of the change to the person. “We all here are supposed to do this,” said Overbeck and indeed the room indicated that it was a common tactic.
• Promoting your own expertise. “Letting people know why they should listen to you because of what you know.” Overbeck noted that in comparison to the first two, this approach was less common.
• Dare them, challenge them. “A bit more contentious,” said Overbeck. “‘I don’t know if you can do this one – prove me wrong’.” Again, a few hands went up.
• Make them feel like a loser if they don’t make the change. It may have been a favoured tactic of former college basketball coach Bob Knight, who Overbeck referenced for his draconian approach, but no hands went up in the room. “Nobody will admit it,” she said, with a smile.

The six types of capital available to leaders

None of the tactics described above are particularly unusual. “We know a lot about the tactics we’ve been told will be helpful for pursuing change,” said Overbeck, adding, “we don’t know what kind of power and influence we need to have ready and available with us in order for these tactics to succeed.”

She returned to the example of Jackson, who managed to elicit the very best from Michael Jordan during their time together at the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.

“Phil Jackson may not have led with power but it was in what he did,” she said. “He was using what was available to him.”

He was, in essence, aware of his ‘capital’, as Overbeck put it. “Power comes from the resources that you control.” There are six kinds of resources, or ‘capital’. The first three are easily explained:

1. Financial – money, essentially.
2. Human – people, specifically their talent, strength and energy (in sporting context)
3. Material – facilities and equipment.

The final three must be used carefully because they can be sourced into power:

4. Psychological – your ability to affect other people’s mental and emotional states. “If you can inspire people and rev them up and get them excited about something then that builds your credibility; it helps to persuade them.” This can, of course, tip into the dark side of manipulation in unscrupulous hands.
5. Social – networks and relationships can be a source of credibility. “That could be encouraging team members to lean on a person or getting your coaches together to influence upwards”, said Overbeck. “That could be social capital as long as you’re controlling that relationship as opposed to abusing it.”
6. Intellectual – your expertise (separate from human capital). “If you hoard it and you only give it out when you get what you want that’s power, otherwise it can be a source of credibility.”

Social and intellectual capital

Overbeck homed in on social and intellectual capital because while leaders in sport may want to have power in the background, you probably will not want to lead with that power.

Instead, you’ll want to dial up your influence and credibility, which can come from various sources, such as trust and belief in your abilities as a coach due to your track record and reputation; that your place is not a result of political chicanery or nepotism.

“I’m going to talk about it as ‘tribal membership’,” said Overbeck. “When people are deciding whether to accept your influence, the No 1 thing they are assessing is: are you with me? Are you part of my team?” She makes it clear that ‘team’ may not be the literal team but your alignment with an individual’s personal values. Without that, they may reject you out of hand. “The first thing we have to do is make sure that we’re telegraphing to the other person that ‘even if we have those differences in terms of those things that you most cherish and value, I honour those things, and I’m not going to get in the way of them. I’m going to work with them, not against them’.”

Once you loosely establish yourself in the same tribe, you then need to demonstrate how your expertise can be of value – that’s your intellectual capital.

Overbeck said: “When we’re trying to build credibility, it’s our job to build that bridge and make sure that the other person understands.”

She likens it to a credit account. “The higher your credit limit, the more you’re able to go out and spend.” However, it must be kept topped up. “Once we’re good, we always have to be thinking: ‘am I getting over my limit?’” You have to continuously demonstrate your credibility or you will lose people.

Final questions to ask yourself:

• How much power and influence do we have in the relationship with the person or people we’re trying to influence?
• Which behavioural style – dominating, negotiating and supplicating – do you lean towards? Or is it a combination? What are the likely outcomes going to be of employing this style?
• Is it doing what we need or do you need to make adjustments?
• To the extent that either our power or our credibility are lacking, are you engaging with some of these behaviours and using some of these resources to boost them up?

By Luke Whitworth

There is a firm link between strong cultural leadership and sustained excellence.

Those leaders can be athletes, such as England captain Harry Kane, who will lead the Three Lions in their Euro 2024 campaign. Or Breanna Stewart, the New York native who returned home in 2022 and led the Liberty to the 2023 WNBA Finals; bagging the league’s MVP in the process.

Kane and Stewart are the embodiment of local heroes who have done well, particularly if you include Kane’s remarkable spell at Tottenham Hotspur.

Then there are coaches who represent an expression of the systems that enable their programmes to excel. On that front, one can point to Kane’s international manager, Gareth Southgate, who has overseen England’s most successful spell since the mid-1960s.

Cultural leaders, however, need not be so high profile. They operate at all levels of an organisation, independent of job title or seniority. Do you recognise the cultural leaders in your team? What steps can you be a better cultural leader?

Cultural leadership – the super enabler

The link between leadership and sustained success is the centrepiece of a research project run by Edd Vahid, the Head of Football Academy Operations at the Premier League.

In June 2022, the business and leadership consultancy commissioned Vahid to undertake a piece of research to discover the ‘secrets of culture’. Two years later, this project, titled ‘Cultural Hypothesis’, is on the cusp of publication.

Ahead of its release, Vahid is leading a three-part Performance Support Series at the Leaders Performance Institute that seeks to explore the enablers in high performing cultures.

The first session, which took place in early May, was a useful way of testing the importance and relevance of the four enablers highlighted by Vahid in the Cultural Hypothesis: purpose, psychological safety, belonging and cultural leadership.

The second, which took place in early June, homed in on cultural leadership, specifically how leaders might change or sustain a culture. The concept is, as Vahid described, a “super enabler” for your sense of purpose, belonging or even psychological safety.

Culture should be an accelerator and energiser

In the session, Vahid observed that organisations are increasingly deliberate and intentional about culture because they see it as a competitive advantage. It is not a one-time annual event – it’s a regular part of ongoing conversations.

This is lost on some organisations, as Jon R Katzenbach, Illona Steffen and Caroline Kronley wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2012:

‘All too often, leaders see cultural initiatives as a last resort. By the time they get around to culture, they’re convinced that a comprehensive overhaul of the culture is the only way to overcome the company’s resistance to major change. Culture thus becomes an excuse and a diversion rather than an accelerator and energiser’.

Four ways to get to grips with your culture

To understand culture you need keen observation and data collection. Vahid proposed several useful tools:

1. The OODA Loop Framework.

During the Korean War, John Boyd, an American military strategist and fighter pilot, devised the OODA Loop as a decision-making process designed to emphasise adaptation and agility in four stages:

• Observation: collect data from various sources.
• Orientation: data is filtered, analysed and enriched.
• Decision: selecting actionable insights for the best response.
• Action: action is taken and the loop begins anew.

Organisations can apply the OODA Loop to assess and respond effectively to cultural dynamics.

2. Cultural health checks

Vahid also pointed to other efforts to collect data around culture, such as UK Sport’s ‘cultural health check’ or retail giant Selfridges using data to better understand their most culturally-stressed communities.

3. Critical incident reviews

Vahid also stressed the importance of critical incident reviews to help observe culture during specific moments such as exits, inductions, wins and losses.

4. The Sigmoid Curve

Teams can also find their place on the Sigmoid Curve, a common model for tracking organisational growth and decline. At each stage, expectations can change, which affects what we see, hear and feel.

Five Steps Towards Cultural leadership

Vahid explored five steps that can help a team to develop cultural leaders.

1. Start with acknowledging the connection between leadership and culture: the literature largely points in this direction, with leaders having a fundamental role in supporting the change management process. As Donald and Charles Sull wrote in the MIT Sloane Management Review in 2022: ‘A lack of leadership investment was, by far, the most important obstacle to closing the gap between cultural aspirations and current reality.’
2. Identify aligned leaders: from there is important to ‘identify leaders who align with the target culture’ as Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J Yo-Jud Cheng wrote in the Harvard Business Reviewin 2018.
3. Honour your existing culture: you can too quickly go from point A to point B without taking a moment to understand what the existing culture looks like. Katzenbach, Steffen and Kronley noted that existing cultural strength should be acknowledged.
4. Build a guiding coalition: identify key individuals and consider diversity within your leadership groups. You should build what thought leader John Kotter calls a ‘guiding coalition’.
5. Understand the levels of cultural leadership: Vahid’s research reveals that cultural leadership operates on three levels:

• • Sponsors: senior individuals critical for manifesting the desired culture.
  • Architects: these are responsible for designing cultural initiatives.
  • Guardians: everyone contributes to safeguarding the culture to varying extents.

By Lottie Wright

Having good ideas is not enough. In order to change thinking and enact change, we need to be able to persuade people.

For the latest edition of our Leadership Skills Series, we explored the art of persuasion. All leaders in sport have the potential to influence others’ thoughts, feelings or actions through effective communication and interpersonal techniques.

The session highlighted four related areas of focus.

1. Build trust by using the Trust Equation

Trust is rightfully acknowledged as the cornerstone of effective leadership and the foundation of relationship-building. To unpack all of that we turned to the Trust Equation. It is a conceptual formula used to describe the components that build trust in professional and personal relationships. It’s often represented as: 

This is what each component means:

Credibility speaks to words and credentials. How authentic are we?

Reliability is the perception of a person’s integrity. Do you do what you say? Are your actions connected to your words?

Intimacy involves the feeling of safety or security when sharing information with someone. How safe or secure does the client or colleague feel in sharing with us?   

Self-orientation reflects the degree to which a person’s focus is directed towards themselves as opposed to being focused on others. What are our motives? For our benefit or the benefit of others?

The higher the numerator (credibility, reliability, intimacy), the greater the trust. Conversely, the higher the self-orientation, the lower the trust. Ultimately, the equation serves as a mindful tool to enrich discussions, elevate trust levels, and deepen relationships within our teams. 

2. Transform how you are perceived

When leading a team or a department, it matters how you are perceived by others. The ability to self-assess your personal status is another strategic tool wielded by seasoned leaders to convey confidence and authority. It includes an assessment of your:

• Body language.
• Vocal tone.
• Word choice.

Such elements can be ranked on a scale from 1 (‘low status’) to 10 (‘high status’) and, when done sincerely, this can be an invaluable guide for navigating various workplace scenarios and can even foster emotional intelligence, which is pivotal in forging genuine connections with athletes and team members. It can also facilitate the development of more impactful leadership skills that inspire and motivate with greater efficiency.

3. Connect ideas and evidence through flows of logic

Flows of logic are the pathways our minds create to connect ideas and evidence to reach a reasoned conclusion. They are essential in critical thinking, problem-solving, and, of course, forming persuasive arguments. Flows of logic involve a sequence of statements or steps that follow one another in a rational and coherent manner. These frameworks can take three different forms, depending on your scenario: 

1. Past –> Present –> Future 
2. Problem –> Choices –> Solutions 
3. Argument –> Evidence –> Conclusion

These can be indispensable guides when constructing persuasive arguments. By grounding our narratives in these logical flows, we enhance storytelling capabilities and foster deeper connections with our teams. This pragmatic approach ensures proactive, relevant support while avoiding unnecessary complexity, thereby maintaining clarity and engagement, particularly in high-pressure situations where decisive leadership is paramount.

4. Practise mindful communication

If you can put those three factors together then you can be better at delivering your message. Mindful communication is another tool upon which you can rely. This idea urges leaders to remain present and deliberate when communicating. It can help a person to:

• Remove filler words.
• Omit unnecessary information.
• Streamline communication channels.
• Optimise attention and retention among listeners.

The members in attendance discussed the success and failure of these elements in the context of people that ‘think to speak,’ and those that ‘speak to think’.

Here are some effective mantras to keep in mind:  

• ‘Slow down, speak up, bring more energy’.
• ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else, talking to anyone else, about anything else’.
• ‘Clean in, strong out’.

Final reflections 

As members reflected on the transformative potential of incorporating these persuasion techniques into their leadership repertoire, they described the following as essential steps towards mastering persuasiveness in your leadership approach: 

• Embrace feedback and recognise areas for improvement in your own field.
• The consistent practice and conscious application of persuasion techniques – they help to refine your leadership over time.
• There are easy, everyday wins that elevate persuasion skills, from how you position yourself, the level of status you reflect, to how you convey a logical thought pattern.
• Just as athletes relentlessly refine their techniques and strategies to achieve peak performance, leaders must adopt a mindset of continuous improvement and adaptability to persuasiveness. 

By John Portch with additional reporting from Luke Whitworth

The last Leaders Performance Institute Think Tank took place at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, a renowned manor hotel and restaurant in Great Milton near Oxford in November.

The Think Tank is designed to connect general managers, coaches and directors of performance – the people with responsibility at the highest levels of world – sport with each other and the ideas that have served their peers best.

The discussions on the day were wide ranging, as the participants delved into five common problems and identified possible approaches and solutions.

1. Taking the pain out of evolution

Renewal is a continuous process in sport, which is not to say that it is always easy, frictionless and without complications. If you are the person tasked with delivering upon your team’s vision, consider:

• How you will establish alignment. Do you have the right athletes and staff in the room to implement your desired style of play? You have to select athletes with the right profile and surround them with staff who can positively reinforce your message.
• Enabling your athletes to see the need for change. It is important to define the ‘old’ and ‘new’ and demonstrate the value of the latter. It is not aways easy but the leader must tackle any obstacles from the outset.
• Making time for your managers. Your owners or front office need to understand the direction of travel if they are to successfully communicate your messages. Get to know them where possible or find the right conduits; and be sure to conserve your own energy in the pursuit of team harmony.

2. Safeguarding the energy of the coach

It is often incumbent on the head coach to provide the energy to the playing group, but who is looking out for the energy of the coach? At a time when coaches fear coming across as ‘weak’, here are some tips for coaches seeking to protect their personal energy.

• Ask yourself: does your executive leadership truly understand the challenges? It is not a given that executive leadership understand the demands of being a head coach. A conduit between executives and the coach can be useful as can a coach development lead with scope for supporting staff members.
• Can you call upon a ‘critical friend’? This is essentially a colleague off whom a coach can bounce ideas and share challenges. It can be useful to provide a safe space for a coach to feel vulnerable without undermining the confidence of the wider group.
• Consider making those relationships formal. Good intent can be fragile and there are financial considerations too. Establishing coach support as a practice can give individuals greater confidence in the resources at their disposal.

3. Developing the next generation of coaches

Succession planning is hard, particularly when one considers that generation-defining coaches are more a product of circumstance than formal programmes. Nevertheless, how can we give aspiring coaches a better chance?

• Do you have a teaching background? In some quarters, pedagogy – teaching practice – seems to be fading from modern coaching. Yet some of the most accomplished coaches have backgrounds in education. There is room for athlete-to-coach transitions but other pathways are available.
• Find the traits that matter. Curiosity and emotional intelligence are critical factors beyond any technical or tactical knowledge. Such individuals love to learn and inspire curiosity in those around them.
• Assess their ability to communicate the details. The finest coaches are able to give clear direction around their often detailed plans. Some coaches are also adept instructing their staff in the nuances of their plans.

4. The creation of sustainable talent pathways

No one has the fully come to terms with talent development pathways, hence the ever-present questions around attributes, development gaps and purpose. What can we do to better identify and then develop our young athletes?

• Understand the difference between innate and acquired attributes. Coaches cannot always comprehend the distinction, which makes it hard to set benchmarks on a talent pathway.
• Talent is developed from a place of safety. Some teams want to entertain their fans and other onlookers – it is nearly impossible to express yourself from a place of fear.
• Ensure greater accessibility. When youngsters have been inspired to try a sport it is important for provide opportunities for participation and progression.

5. The use of AI and other technology

No other area is as widely misunderstood by coaches and practitioners as artificial intelligence and its role in sport. There is, however, no need to stray from your performance principles in putting them into practice. Remember:

• Data is just an input. It is at its best when combined with instinct and judgement.
• AI can free up your staff to focus on other areas. AI is primed to remove time-consuming tasks such as coding. A scout, for example, may be freed up to focus on assessing the person and their character.
• AI can challenge the primary knowledge base of your team. This should further enable staff to develop when adhering to guiding principles around the safety and use of AI.

Participants

Mo Bobat, Director of Cricket, Royal Challengers Bangalore

Michael Bourne, Performance Director, Lawn Tennis Association

Matti Clements, Executive General Manager, Australian Institute of Sport

Steve Cooper, football manager

Chris Fagan, Senior Coach, Brisbane Lions

Rob Key, Managing Director of Cricket, England & Wales Cricket Board

Marc-Oliver Kochan, Managing Director, Red Bull Athlete Performance

Sean Marks, General Manager, Brooklyn Nets

Tabai Matson, Director of Performance & Development, Harlequin RFC

Sara Symington, Head of Olympic & Paralympic Programmes, British Cycling

Jess Thirlby, Head Coach, England Netball

Simon Timson, Performance Director, Manchester City FC

Gregor Townsend, Head Coach, Scotland men’s rugby team

By Luke Whitworth

This member virtual roundtable centred around the theme of ‘belonging’, in which we dedicated time to collaborate as a group on sharing insights and experiences around why belonging is a key cornerstone of a high performing environment, as well as how we are working to bring the notion of belonging to life in our respective environments.

The notion of ‘belonging’ can be simply defined as ‘a sense of connectedness to others and what you are doing’. The Cambridge English Dictionary extends the definition of belonging to ‘a feeling of being happy or comfortable as part of a particular group and having a good relationship with the other members of the group because they welcome you and accept you’.

Psychology research shows that in cultures and environments that show autonomy, competence and belonging, individuals will elevate their engage in tasks and activities they are asked to commit to.

It’s clear from both the literature and lived experiences of the group that creating belonging is a powerful tool for a harmonious and high-functioning environment. The aim of this particular roundtable was to share best practices and examples of how we are trying to foster belonging in our environments.

It starts at the induction stage

In one of the breakout groups, they reinforced the idea that the process of creating positive belonging starts at the induction or onboarding phase and how important it is to dedicate time and intent towards this process to set the right tone. The work to create belonging continues week on week during this onboarding phase, with the acknowledgement and value that an individual or individuals bring to the team. From a team perspective, it is an opportunity to acknowledge the variety and diversity of backgrounds, skills and views of those in the department or organisation from the outset.

In summarising this first point, there was an excellent reflection that how we make people or an individual feel is the most important thing. Every interaction matters and what you do is about making them feel the way you want them to feel.

Setting the stall out around the culture

There were a number of reflections on how to give your environment the best opportunity for positive belonging. Identify the values and culture expected of individuals within your environment, and perhaps most importantly, find practical ways to instil them. Is everyone in the environment crystal clear on what the behaviours and expectations are? If you have this in place, there can be collective accountability. Similarly, it is important to be consistent in positively reinforcing, noticing and celebrating positive examples of those behaviours.

A couple of people on the call also suggested that coach buy-in is really crucial in this process. If the head coach buys into the values then the majority of people in the environment tend to follow, such is the influence the head coach carries.

In setting yourselves up for success, create opportunities for athletes, coaches and staff to convene and build the culture together. Creating opportunities for discussion on values and behaviours supports the idea of creating a sense of belonging. It is widely acknowledged that engagement, contribution and a love for what you do leads to a sense of belonging, therefore lies the challenge in ensuring we are bringing this to life.

Finally, there was a discussion around language and its importance. There was a fantastic phrase shared on the call that ‘above-the-line language is powerful, but below-the-line language is powerless’. There is a responsibility to own the standards of the language.

The power of storytelling

A common response from the group around effective ways to instil belonging was utilising the power of story. Find the story that connects to the people that you’re working with, whilst recognising the significant cultural differences that exist in the environment. The story that you use must align with the culture. One environment on the call shared how they leant on metaphor in creating an overarching theme that is reframed every year.

Story also presents the opportunity to connect those across the backroom staff, athlete population and other forward-facing roles. There was a suggestion this should also extend to family members of those involved, bringing them into the culture and environment, knowing the importance of the environment off the field. Do they feel that sense of belonging as well?

Finally, we also discussed the impact story can have around connecting individuals to the cultural environment of the country that you are in. It also presents the opportunity to embrace the culture that individual is bringing into the environment.

Create opportunities for shared experiences & collective input

Responses from the group indicate that every interaction matters and it is important to be mindful of that. Therefore, how are you intentionally creating opportunities for shared experiences and opportunities for collective input from different stakeholders?

A simple initiative to instil is celebrating ‘the good’ when done well and highlighting small wins and successes.

Encourage active listening and understanding of everyone’s opinions – providing a space and opportunity for everyone to have a voice in key decisions is found to be an effective way of supporting belonging in an environment. To ensure the above is both effective and a success, organisational leaders require an openness and receptivity to ensure the environment is designed to be safe.

There were also a number of reflections around the power of ‘inclusive initiatives and rituals’ that bring people together. Finally on this point: are you formally capturing information from the stakeholders in your environment in a consistent way? This is a simple tactic to remain on the pulse of the environment, ensure those in the organisation have a chance to provide feedback and contribute to decision-making and the state of play on the culture.

Providing space to better understand the ‘whole person’

One of the final key buckets of discussion around instilling a sense of belonging in your environment was formal and informal opportunities to better understand the whole person. We should strive to provide space to celebrate authenticity and our true selves. Does your environment provide an opportunity for employees to breathe and express themselves?

A foundation stone of the High Performance Strategy in the Australian Olympic System is the athlete’s voice. The idea is to provide opportunities to understand one’s journey, both as an athlete and as a person. The self-determination theory concept is something that is really key in this piece and its relatedness to belonging. Creating opportunities to understand the whole person allows for further insight around ones intrinsic motivation and the opportunity for honest, open conversations within the environment.

Final reflections

At our Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments event in Melbourne back in 2023, we ran an Open Spaces session on this exact topic. The aim of the session was to allow the audience on the day to share stories, experiences and perspectives on belonging. Five things came through strongly from those in the room that day around what we can do to enhance belonging in our environment.

1. Recognition and feeling valued: leaders having an understanding of the individual and what they contribute to the team.
2. Understanding the whole person: creating opportunities, both formal and informal to get to know more about the people you work with other than what their role is. Having a forum to share your story, providing awareness and respect of outside of work commitments.
3. Inclusive rituals: how are we making others part of the family?
4. Shared experiences: opportunity for trust and friendship to be developed. Celebrating others’ successes rather than just the outcome of competition.
5. A safe and welcoming environment: explicit commitment to psychological safety. Creating an environment that gives people a high degree of autonomy and trust to do their job. Provide a healthy space for debate and then valuing and actioning that input.

By John Portch

Helene Wilson came to high performance coaching from a background in education, so it is no surprise that she places a premium on learning.

“Working in netball, in a woman’s environment, and coming from a background of being a teacher, I think that learning is incredibly important,” she told the audience at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium.

“And how do we create an environment where high performance comes from out-learning your opposition and people are on a journey together to get there?”

Wilson, who currently serves as Manager of High Performance Sport New Zealand’s [HPSNZ] Women in High Performance Sport programme, was primarily at the Etihad to discuss her five years as Head Coach of the Northern Mystics, a netball team in New Zealand’s ANZ Premiership.

She took the Mystics’ reins in 2017 and would eventually lead the Auckland-based franchise to success in the 2021 Premiership Grand Final, ending their 24-year wait for a national championship. But not before the team bottomed out in 2019. “We were the wooden spooners,” she said.

The team had performed promisingly in the preceding seasons but, in 2018, the unforeseen departure of goal shooter Maria Folau due to personal reasons left the Mystics underpowered. It showed on the court and Wilson admitted that she was perhaps fortunate to retain her job at one stage given the turmoil behind the scenes, “but the players wanted to come back and play for the team because they believed in what we were trying to do.” Two years later they were champions.

Beyond reaching and winning a Grand Final, Wilson and the Mystics wanted to rewrite the history of netball underachievement in New Zealand’s Northern Zone, where Wilson coached the sport for three decades.

“The Northern Zone has the biggest number of participants in netball – a third of our netball-playing population is there. There is also a population of ethnic diversity, age diversity, socio-economic diversity,” she continued. “We had 17 netball centres across that area and I inherited a narrative over that time that we’re talented – more than anyone else – but it’s actually a curse in high performance because that doesn’t matter.”

There had, according to Wilson, been a history of disharmony in the Mystics ranks. “The landscape of where we come from, and thinking about the land, it was actually quite disjointed. Auckland, our biggest city in New Zealand, is groups of little villages that are quite insular and quite different to each other. And we were also sitting on volcanoes and literally it was pretty explosive the way we used to behave.”

By the time they won the championship in 2021 and went close again the following year, this was a team transformed. “We won the Premiership after 24 years of trying, but really the learnings, what happened between 2017 and 2019 and up to 2021 was massive and it’s not just about me and what I did – it was about what we did together.”

Finding energy and bringing clarity to the changing room

The “catalyst for change”, as Wilson describes it, was her involvement in HPSNZ’s Te Hāpaitanga: Women in High Performance Sport Coaching Initiative. Its pilot programme ran in 2019 with Wilson serving as a mentor to women applying to be high performance coaches.

The cohort visited a ‘marae’, a Māori meeting ground, of which the focal point is the ‘wharenui’, the communal house where people meet. A wharenui, with its ornate wooden carvings and elaborate design, is steeped in Māori metaphor. It provides a space for collective, inclusive, reflective practice (‘Rongo’ in Māori) that enables people to reengage with problems in the world beyond (‘Tū’) having formed a consensus on the best solutions.

“There is an energy about it,” she said. “The process and energy is like a coming together and moving apart in a state of clarity, which is collectively built together. The process of ‘Karakia’ – transitioning from one realm to another – takes us from the worlds of Tū and Rongo.”

It was a cultural element that resonated first with Wilson then with her playing group. “You don’t need to know it’s Māori,” she said. “If I stood at the front and tried to be Māori I think people would think I’m a fraud and I’ve got to be respectful, not being Māori, but having a deep understanding because I do come from New Zealand.” Wilson encourages coaches working in other regions or nations to find the cultural artefacts that are authentic their groups. “There’s stuff around us everywhere that you can apply in different ways and it’s the framework that is key.”

Coming away from the pilot programme, Wilson drew on the work of corporate anthropologist Michael Henderson who wrote a book in 2014 entitled Above the Line. According to Henderson, people will come to a team with their own beliefs, which play out as behaviours. People’s values are born of their beliefs and behaviours and, in a team setting, these all help to construct the group’s collective behaviours. These eventually become the team’s culture.

At the Mystics, group behaviours tended to be a product of the disharmony that denoted the team’s decades of under-achievement. The group would seemingly generate a lot of heat but not necessarily much light.

It ultimately comes down to the leader. “The mistake we often make is starting at values rather than giving space for beliefs to be heard,” said Wilson. The trick was to create a space where everyone felt empowered to share their beliefs. “We came together as a group and said ‘everyone’s a leader. The standard we walk past is the standard we are prepared to accept’ and it’s super important not to walk past unacceptable standards. So we redefined our environment so that everyone on our team was a leader and ‘leadership’ was simply our actions and our behaviours. It wasn’t the role or the position we were given.

“We needed to have a better understanding of what being valued and contributing to value looked like and how that would affect performance. So there was intense learning at this time because the players wanted to be a leader but there needs to be clear evidence of what that means for performance – and intense learning is how do we care, listen and bring those diverse opinions to the table, as well as skillsets the people bring. I think we learned that together as staff, performance experts and players.”

Learning from the ‘moment of truth’

In his 2021 book Belonging, Owen Eastwood cited Harvard professors (the late) Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman, specifically their renowned 2008 publication on corporate leadership teams entitled Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make them Great. ‘Of all the factors we assessed in our research,’ they wrote, ‘the one that makes the biggest difference in how well a senior leadership team performs is the clarity of the behavioural norms that guide members’ interactions’.

It was on Wilson and Sulu Fitzpatrick, who was appointed as the Mystics captain in 2021, to create the right environment. “We were trying to learn what stuff we will deploy in that circumstance to ensure that the collective performance outcomes we needed were going to happen. In the Māori world we call this ‘Kotahitanga’. ‘Ko’ meaning a central point’; ‘Tahi’ meaning one; ‘Kotahitanga’ meaning collective unit.”

For the Mystics, Kotahitanga meant reaching a consensus through ‘Wānanga’. “It’s a word that means coming together and meeting to discuss, collaborate and consider,” Wilson told the Etihad audience. “It could look similar to a team meeting but it can take many forms and Wānanga happens in many ways. Conceptually, it happens in the world of Rongo; you’ve got to go deep. At a Wānanga, I put a concept on the table, a picture of performance that I may see as a head coach, or someone else may put it there depending on who’s taking a lead that day, and the Wānanga takes the form of questions, from multiple perspectives, and we keep going until we get some sense of alignment. It doesn’t come with any level of expertise or experience, it comes with everybody’s level and everybody contributes.”

The Mystics would typically hold a team-wide Wānanga once a week and any time the group deemed one necessary. Wilson’s role was to ensure: “enough creative tension in the room to drive performance and shift performance but also making sure that people were able to learn the art of listening, hearing, weaving different perspectives and energy that people brought to the Wānanga.

“Wānanga can get heated, it can be soft and gentle, it can be all of those things, but Wānanga is about is that you sit there in the world of Rongo until you get it done. Sometimes we had training or practice [in the world of Tū] straight after and we were running late because the Wānanga is more important than the physical practice – practice had to happen whenever it needed to happen based on the Wānanga.”

Wilson explained that there were three broad categories of people, characterised through their ‘energy’, who would join a Wānanga: people who connected to others from the heart, those who had insight from their intellect, and people with the drive and willpower to perform. “My shift as head coach was to connect to those three levels of care of where I was with an individual.”

It was not easy. At first, there was a lack of intent, decisiveness and the results did not necessarily translate into performance. “I think setting this up was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done and one of the spaces where I learnt so much as a coach.”

Crucially, the group bought-in, even after the underwhelming 2019 season and the disruption of the pandemic. In time, the group developed its own lexicon, which included the term ‘moment of truth’, meaning a reference to the key moments in a match as defined by players and coaches individually, who would then weave their ‘moments of truth’ together in a Wānanga. “We would stay there until we were ready to define the moment of truth that was going to give us the greatest learning going forward.”

As she said, it was not always Wilson who led the Wānanga. She recognised the need for others to take the lead in order to feel that they belonged and that their input was valued. ‘We look for proof of our values from our leaders,’ wrote Owen Eastwood in Belonging. ‘We do not want our leaders’ personal beliefs forced upon us – we want our tribe’s authentic values articulated.’

That is where Wilson felt the key knowledge sat in any case. “My learning was to sit at the back and know that my knowledge was not sufficient; that the knowledge was in the room and I was there to sense the problem and the Wānanga would sort out what the problem was. I needed to be the last one talking in the room.”

In Part II, we explore how the coaching staff helped the Mystics players to transfer their personal and collective development to the court.

By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Performance Support virtual roundtable series of 2023, we are focusing our attention on the overarching topic of Performance Planning.

Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas as part of this topic:

• Leading with purpose: the relationship between personal and professional purpose on shaping organisational and team planning.
• Goal harmony vs. team harmony: how can you create team alignment to galvanise and focus your team performance?
• Debriefing: implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

For the final part of this learning series, the focus of the content and conversations centred around implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

Outcomes of the session included:

• Reflecting on how your teams and organisations learn through reflection.
• Learning about principles for practical debriefing.
• Exploring pitfalls and success factors for debriefing.

Debriefing as a critical component of a high performing organisation

In setting the scene for this virtual roundtable, we leaned into the work of Arie De Geus, who was one of the early thinkers in the space of systems thinking and how we can learn and ally new learning to create a competitive advantage. De Geus was quoted as saying that ‘the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors’. Effective debriefing forms a key role in creating a true learning organisation and allowing you to use learning as a source of competitive advantage.

Combining the work of De Geus, Peter Senge in his work for The Fifth Discipline suggests that the highest performing organisations consistently learn and put systems in place where they are able to extract information and collective intelligence. When thinking about the topic of debriefing, there are often questions considered around to how we should do it and when. Answering these questions and systematising will support a shift towards a culture of learning.

Before we move into exploring specific elements of debriefing, we also explored the difference between traditional organisations and those who are termed learning organisations.

Senge defined organisations as where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. Pedlar provides a definition of a learning organisation as being able to facilitate learning of all its members with the aim of continuously transforming itself.

How are we currently implementing debriefing?

Reflecting on how we are currently implementing debriefing provided an opportunity for those on the call to share their experiences of this process in their environment. There were some differences in responses to how debriefing is leveraged.

• Informal post-session debriefs which are followed by more formal debriefs at a later date.
• Weekly reviews that take place before the performance outcome.
• Integration of a yearly debriefing opportunity alongside some unstructured but regular conversations.
• There were some differences in how debriefing takes place with athletes and how it operates with coaches. It was mentioned more than once that athletes get it daily in a very structured way but from a coaching capacity, they tend to be more casual on a daily basis but extended formally on a quarterly basis.
• A combination of debriefs or reviews of planning which are immediate (review of the week). Some are quarterly planning and others annually to review the original plan.

As part of this conversation, there were some interesting reflections on the nature of debriefing in some of our environments. A point was made around debriefs or reviews leading to us slipping into planning or a solution mindset. We can experience tangents and not effectively staying on the task of the debrief – effective debriefing requires intent and discipline.

There were also some reflections on debriefing tending to focus on the eventuality of a negative outcome such as a defeat, as opposed to when we win. Participants on the call shared that in the debriefing process, often there is a lack of action, something that other members of the team or players pick up on. Actions are crucial for buy-in – it is easy to review and reflect, but to generate actual change is where the impact of a debrief comes in.

Skills for effective debriefing

We’ve discussed the importance of debriefing and how it is currently being implemented in our environments, but it is also important to consider the skills required for debriefing to be effective. When the question of what skills are required were put to the group, these are some of the responses that followed:

• A case of not just focusing on weaknesses or things to improve, but celebrating what went well (even if it didn’t fully succeed in outcome).
• Questioning to draw out areas of improvement rather than always telling people what is wrong.
• Involving all and integrating all departments into the meeting that contribute to performance.
• Listening skills.
• Emotional regulation and understanding emotions. Positive communication and collaboration.
• The skill of facilitation.

For effective debriefing, having a framework or system in place will elevate its impact. We discussed a simple framework that can be used by anyone as a benchmark:

Planning for action. Planning for the debrief is important, particularly how the debriefs will happen and the skills required to make them effective. Often it is easy for debriefs to become emotional – a process in pre-planning helps to keep things on track.

Action. This is the doing part.

Reflection. How do you reflect accurately, especially in an emotionally charged environment, whether positive or negative? Reflection is a key still to aid questioning and listening.

Relating back into action. Take the learning and do something with it. If you do not do this, it is a waste of time. Debriefing is about initiating change and continuous improvement.

To summarise this section, having the ability to reflect, appraise and reappraise is considered a cornerstone of lifelong learning and performance.

Challenges in debriefing

The group highlighted a number of challenges that are associated with debriefing. The idea was to identify what often gets in the way of being good at debriefing, allowing us to evaluate how we currently approach debriefing. There were six key challenges highlighted that we should be aware of.

• A lack of process.
• Gaps in the skill of self-reflecting.
• Lack of skills in respectfully challenging others.
• Outcome bias. Debriefs can often be swayed by the outcome.
• Debriefing when it goes wrong not when it goes right.

To summarise

The influence of debriefing is a topic often talked about within the Leaders Performance Institute. We all know the importance of it but there is a feeling that there remains vast room for improvement in how to do it effectively. As we rounded off this virtual roundtable, we reflected on some of the key considerations and opportunities for debriefing, to ensure you engage in it more effectively in your environment.

It’s worth noting that debriefing is free, yet presents a fantastic opportunity for continuous improvement without financial resource. With any sort of debriefing, using a process to embed and plan out debriefing is a positive first step in its impact. Remove outcome bias and instead focus on the learning, decision-making and impact areas – outcome bias will sway the quality of the debrief. Be sensitive of time and, where you can, engage in debriefs immediately after the performance. Keep them short and to the point. Gather as many facts as possible first, allowing you to be dispassionate and objective. As an observation, watch for people proving vs. challenging themselves. Reflection skills are powerful so ensure you practise them to elevate the quality of the debrief. Finally, keep a journal and a log of the key learnings from the process.